Salman Rushdie

Haroun & Luka — (1990, 2010) Ages 9-12. Available for download at Audible.com

Haroun and the Sea of Stories — (1990) Ages 9-12. Publisher: Haroun's father is the greatest of all storytellers. His magical stories bring laughter to the sad city of Alifbay. But one day something goes wrong and his father runs out of stories to tell. Haroun is determined to return the storyteller's gift to his father. So he flies off on the back of the Hoopie bird to the Sea of Stories — and a fantastic adventure begins.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories: “Wishes are Not Such Easy Things, as You Well Know.”

I confess that I’ve read nothing by Salman Rushdie before, and any knowledge I have of him stems from the controversy that surrounds him. Most are probably well aware of this already, but in 1988 his novel The Satanic Verses was published, resulting in a call by Muslim extremists for his execution. Consequently, he has been forced to spend many years under police protection. I only mention this in the context of this review, because I doubt Haroun and the Sea of Stories would exist had Rushdie not experienced this concentrated effort to have him permanently silenced.

It must have been surprising for fans of Rushdie to find that the first book he published after The Satanic Verses was a children’s book (albeit a complex and lengthy one). Twelve chapters in all, with intricate, intriguing and intoxicating illustrations (try saying that three times fast) by Paul Birkbeck, this is a book that’s difficult to pin-down. And yet, it doesn’t take much to grasp that it tells the story behind The Satanic Verses controversy.

Young Haroun is the son of Rashid Khalifa, a famous storyteller, called the Ocean of Notions by his admirers and the Shah of Blah by his detractors. Yet when his wife runs off with another man, and Haroun impatiently tells him: “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” Rashid finds that he can no longer tell any stories. This could not have happened at a more inopportune time, for Rashid has just been hired by a number of politicos to speak on their behalf in various cities.

Stricken with guilt, Haroun makes up his mind to restore his father’s dried-up “Story Water,” though the solution comes to him in an entirely unexpected way. He awakes one night to find a Water Genie attempting to shut off the flow of inspiration into his father’s mind, and wrangles his way into accompanying the Genie back to the second moon that orbits the world: Kahani — the source of stories.

Kahani is a beautiful place, covered in a multi-coloured ocean that contains streams and currents of stories. Huge Plentimaw fishes drink the Story-Waters and spout out brand new stories, whilst Floating Gardeners untwist complicated story streams. All of this flows from a great Wellspring at the North Pole of Kahani, and the moon itself is divided into the lands of Gup (perpetually daylight) and Chup (forever nighttime). But something is poisoning the waters, and disrupting the stories created from them. On the dark side of the moon lives Khattam-Shud (translation: ‘completely finished’ or ‘over and done with’) who is systematically ruining all the tragedies, comedies, romances, mysteries and dramas of the world. Why?

“The World is not for fun. The world is for Controlling. Your world, my world, all worlds. They are there to be Ruled. And inside every single story, inside every Stream in the Ocean, there lies a world, a story-world, that I cannot Rule at all. And that is the reason why.”

Of course, Haroun isn’t going to stand for any of this, and neither are the denizens of Kahani. Along with various other characters that Haroun has met on his travels, the denizens of the light side of the moon band together (in the most talkative way possible) to rescue a kidnapped princess and save the Ocean of Stories.

Rushdie paints a vivid portrait of Khattam-Shud’s portion of the moon, in which everything is shrouded in perpetual darkness, the mouths of his people are sewn together, and everyone works in dull monotony to destroy stories and plug the Wellspring. And yet, there’s room for beauty here as well, as Haroun discovers when he spots a silent swordsman who communicates in Abhinaya (the Language of Gesture). There is also a smile-inducing moment when Rashid (having been exasperated by all the arguing and debating going on amongst the army of Gup) finds that their tendency to talk endlessly has unexpected rewards.

To be honest, I don’t think I’m up to the challenge of exploring the myriad of themes and the depths of meaning in this book. Although the dichotomy between the light/dark, vocal/silent, united/disharmonious halves of the moon is straightforward enough, I’m sure there’s a lot more here to discuss on political, religious and social levels and it’s probably best for the reader to dip their head into the stream and discover these aspects of storytelling for themselves.

If I was to compare it to anything, Haroun and the Sea of Stories would be most like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland — there is the same plot of a child thrown into a beautiful yet mystifying world, in which language quirks are taken quite literally (“Adjectives can’t talk.” “Money talks, they say, so why not Adjectives?”) and the rules of existence are easily bent or broken. In fact, there is a passage that directly mimics Carroll: “[She was] as large as life and twice as beautiful.” Yup, there’s definitely a little Alice in this book!

And as in reading Alice in Wonderland, the average child might grasp the fact that there’s more going on here than meets the eye. There is meaning in every character, every circumstance, practically every word: ideas that swell up from the pages for the reader’s enjoyment and consideration. And like Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, it may take a couple of years and several more reads to comprehend them all. But since Haroun and the Sea of Stories is so rewarding the first time around, I think it will be revisited by children who were properly intrigued by their first taste of it. As will adults, of course!

Try as the Khattam-Shuds of this world may (and not just those responsible for the fatwa against Rushdie, but the fundamentalists who attempt to ban books by J.K. Rowling or Philip Pullman, or the politically-correct administrators who want to censor the likes of C.S. Lewis), good stories will prevail.
—Rebecca Fisher

Luka and the Fire of Life — (2010) Ages 9-12. Publisher: With the same dazzling imagination and love of language that have made Salman Rushdie one of the great storytellers of our time, Luka and the Fire of Life revisits the magic-infused, intricate world he first brought to life in the modern classic Haroun and the Sea of Stories. This breathtaking new novel centers on Luka, Haroun’s younger brother, who must save his father from certain doom. For Rashid Khalifa, the legendary storyteller of Kahani, has fallen into deep sleep from which no one can wake him. To keep his father from slipping away entirely, Luka must travel to the Magic World and steal the ever-burning Fire of Life. Thus begins a quest replete with unlikely creatures, strange alliances, and seemingly insurmountable challenges as Luka and an assortmentof enchanted companions race through peril after peril, pass through the land of the Badly Behaved Gods, and reach the Fire itself, where Luka’s fate, and that of his father, will be decided. Filled with mischievous wordplay and delving into themes as universal as the power of filial love and the meaning of mortality, Luka and the Fire of Life is a book of wonders for all ages.

Luka and the Fire of Life: A Quest to Write an Ageless Story

The Little Prince and Alice in Wonderland are sometimes considered “Children’s Literature,” but both stories speak to the human imagination so directly that they free themselves from the shackles of young age. In his latest novel, Luka and the Fire of Life, Salman Rushdie seeks to write a transcendently ageless, imaginative story about Luka, a boy who was born to turn back time.

Luka is an unusual child. Like his brother Haroun from Haroun and the Sea of Stories, he is a child born with special powers. When he curses a circus ringmaster, the animals successfully rebel against their cruel master and Luka finds himself with two new companions: Bear, a dog, and Dog, a bear. It seems that Luka, like his brother before him, is bound for adventure (Luka and the Fire of Life should be considered a companion rather than a sequel).

Disaster strikes quickly, if not drastically. Luka’s father has fallen asleep. A sleep so big that he requires an I.V. feed to survive. Sadly, it looks like Luka’s father is about to die.

Luka enters the world of magic with his two companions Bear and Dog. Their guide is “Nobodaddy,” a being that is both nobody and Luka’s daddy. Nobodaddy has come to take Luka’s father into nothingness, but he is still willing to watch Luka as he attempts to find and steal the Fire of Life. Nobodaddy is just the first of many unusual companions that join Luka’s quest.

The Fire of Life is hidden deep within the magic realm, and it is protected by beasts and even gods. Will Luka save his father or will he end up as Coyote warns — bound to a rock, food for the vultures? He encounters a varied cast of characters that he must outwit in order to save his father, perhaps the most memorable being the King of Riddles and the Rats of the Respect-o-rat. Part of the fun of reading stories like these is watching the hero encounter such weird personalities, and Rushdie does his best to provide an engaging cast of memorable foes.

Rushdie has created an often-surreal atmosphere in Luka and the Fire of Life, but his word play is the most memorable part of the novel. When Luka declares himself insulted, the Border Rat replies:

That you say you are offended, insults me mortally. And if you insult one Rat mortally, you insult all Rats gravely. And a grave offense to all Rats is a funeral crime…

Fortunately, Luka’s father is a writer, so he is able to stay afloat in this sea of words. In fact, Luka is lost in the magical dream world of his dying father, so he is usually able to quite easily, rather than cleverly, solve the problems he faces.

Like Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, Rushdie is ever allusive and humorous. Rushdie is one of the most acclaimed writers of our time, and readers that are able to tune in to the magic realism that Rushdie has created here are likely to enjoy Luka and the Fire of Life.
—Ryan Skardal